


A Mourning Colour as Bright as The Sun

by NahaFlowers



Category: The Hour
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-11 00:07:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7014241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NahaFlowers/pseuds/NahaFlowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yellow reminds her of Freddie.</p><p>Bel PoV, series 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mourning Colour as Bright as The Sun

**Author's Note:**

> First posted on Tumblr. All I ever write is Bel angst tbh.

Yellow reminds her of Freddie.

She’s not worn it since he got back. (She barely wore it while he was away. Only when she missed him most: a subtle signal that only she knew; a mourning colour as bright as the sun).

Today, however, it’s the only thing she’s got to wear in her office. She’s still in her cocktail dress from last night. Lix helps her change and she barely thinks about it. Not then. Not until later.

Later, when they’re just settling back into a pattern, learning to move around each other again, work together almost like before; then Freddie announces that he has to get back to Camille. To his wife. Apparently she threw a cup at him.

Bel doesn’t let herself feel her full reaction to this, doesn’t let herself think about the drop in her stomach as she asks, almost casually, “How’s her aim?”

“Good,” says Freddie, although she can see no visible marks on him, for which she breathes a silent sigh of relief. Then, “she’ll forgive me,” he says, and Bel wishes that she wouldn’t, wishes she would throw Freddie out so she could have him back, like they were before. She hates herself for thinking it. But even so, that’s not all she wishes.

She barely hears his next words, his reply to her questions, the sweetness of his tone as he talks about his wife merely washing over her until she feels nauseous. It is only when he says goodnight, tries to escape, that she comes back to her senses.

“I wish you’d told me,” she starts, feeling more than seeing him turn around to face her again, unable, as ever, to resist the lure call of possible truth, the first real truth she’s told him since she found out he was married. She wants to stop, to take back the words she’s already said, but finds that she can’t; now that she’s started, she can’t stop, and the words come tumbling out. The yellow she is wearing suddenly seems much too bright, like a siren, an alarm, a flare, calling him to her. She thinks he will think that she has worn it because of him, to taunt and tease him, to remind him of the yellow lamp he once bought her. Even though she did no such thing (not this time, anyway). She stumbles on as he looks at her, saying “Before you did such a stupid…” She tries to swallow the word back down but it just comes up again, like phlegm, “stupid…wonderful thing.” She finally swallows it back and knows that it will choke her later.

Freddie looks at her then, but his eyes are glazed over, and there is no emotion in them. He does not think she wore the yellow for him; he doesn’t think of it at all, and were you to ask him later, what colour she was wearing, he would almost certainly reply that he didn’t know. He has mastered the art of covering his emotions, now; it is a skill she has been a master of for years, but it is deeply unsettling on Freddie’s usually overly expressive face. She shivers.

He asks, “And what would you have done?” And his voice is flat. She tries not to break as he turns away, walks away from her, back to his wife. His wife, his wife…no matter how many times she repeats that to herself in her head, she cannot convince herself that it is true. She turns away towards her desk, once he is gone, and leans against the yellow lamp for a while, stroking the shade where paint is peeling off from years of use, steadying her thoughts until she thinks of nothing. 

Later on, she will go home and strip off her blouse and bathe and scrub her torso, where the yellow silk had been, until it feels like her skin will peel off. As if she could scrub away her love for him (for that is what it is, she now admits to herself). But she can’t.

Still, after this she is better; better at hiding it, better at controlling her feelings. The mask is back on. And things with Freddie are better too. She almost believes she can bear it, some days. Until her eyes catch on the yellow lamp. She wishes she could throw the damn thing away, but she can’t bear to; can’t bear the hurt she will see in his eyes if one day it’s not there anymore and can’t bear the other possibility; that his eyes will pass over the vacuum it leaves on her desk and he will feel nothing. So she leaves it.  
She never wears yellow again, though.


End file.
